The Art of Painting

_The Art of Painting (Dutch: Allegorie op de schilderkunst)_, is a 17th-century oil painting by Netherlands painter Johannes Vermeer. wikipedia

The Art of Painting. - wikimedia

The painting depicts an artist painting a woman dressed in blue posing as a model in his studio. The subject is standing by a window and a large map of the Low Countries hangs on the wall behind. It is signed to the right of the girl "I [Oannes] Ver. Meer", but not dated. Most experts assume it was executed sometime between 1665/1668, but some suggest the work could have been created as late as 1670–1675 — wikipedia

The painting has only two figures, the painter and his subject, a woman with downcast eyes. The painter was thought to be a self-portrait of the artist; Jean-Louis Vaudoyer suggested the young woman could be his daughter. The painter sits in front of the painting on the easel, where you can see the sketch of the crown. He is dressed in an elegant black garment with cuts on the sleeves and on the back that offers a glimpse of the shirt underneath. He has short puffy breeches and orange stockings, an expensive and fashionable garment that is also found in other works of the time, as in a well-known self-portrait by Rubens — wikipedia

Detail of Vermeer's ''Art of Painting'' showing the painter at his easel using a maulstick - wikimedia

zoom into a landscape in the border of a map hung on the wall in the artists studio depicted in Vermeer's The Art of Painting

Frames in frames in frames. Consider the top left corner of the map on the back wall. The border itself contains landscapes of notable locations in the Netherlands. Within that border, but floating over the map of the territory, another frame decorates what appear to be words, likely metadata about the map.